<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=3>As the debate over the question of whether or not white workers have an
<BR>interest in racism has been waged this past week or so, it has constantly
<BR>struck me that the fundamental weakness in Yoshie's argument was being
<BR>overlooked. That is to say, what was not being challenged, and yet what is
<BR>seriously flawed, is a conception of class, most common within the
<BR>Marxist-Leninist tradition, which is defined entirely by relations of
<BR>production at the point of production, a conception which we could call
<BR>productivist. Using this productivist notion of class, Yoshie could say that
<BR>the entire question of the relationship of class and other social identities
<BR>[race, gender, sexual orienation and so on] revolved around the question of
<BR>whether or not the dominant side of the social identity contradiction
<BR>extracted surplus from the subordinate side [ie, white workers extracted
<BR>surplus from workers of color, male workers extracted surplus from female
<BR>workers]. Absent such an exploitative relationship, she asserted, they have
<BR>no material interest in the subordination of the other, that is, in racism,
<BR>sexism, heterosexism and so on. Their allegiance to racism, sexism,
<BR>heterosexism is thus ideological in the classical sense of being a case of
<BR>'false consciousness.'
<BR>
<BR>Beware of any argument that ends with the conclusion that working people are
<BR>blinded by ideology and 'false consciousness,' if for no other reason than
<BR>the fact that it is guaranteed to lead working people to ignore whichever
<BR>self-appointed vangaurd makes it. But in addition to being politically
<BR>suicidal, it is also very poor social theory.
<BR>
<BR>While I am convinced that there are very real differentials in the rate of
<BR>surplus extraction among different groups of workers [male vs. female, white
<BR>vs. people of color], and while I believe that it is sufficient that the
<BR>dominant group be less intensively exploited than the subordinate group for
<BR>there to be a material interest on their part in maintaining those
<BR>relationships of domination and subordination, which then must be weighed
<BR>against other material interests, I am even more convinced that it is an
<BR>error to allow the question to be defined in such a narrow, productivist
<BR>fashion.
<BR>
<BR>Take the relationship of class and race. Neither white workers nor workers of
<BR>color are likely to understand their social position in society, and thus
<BR>their interests, through such a narrow, point of production lens. They will
<BR>be concerned not only with their wages and working conditions, but perhaps
<BR>even more so with such matters of social consumption as the quality of life
<BR>in their neighborhoods and communities [safety and the rate of crime <drug
<BR>use, prostitution, street crime>; violence at the hands of police; the
<BR>quality of municipal services from garbage collection to fire protection,
<BR>from public transportation to the repair of roads, from a supply of
<BR>inexpensive, good quality housing to the supply of decent, competitive retail
<BR>stores, from the number of good libraries and museums to the number of
<BR>parks], as well as the quality of the education and health care to which
<BR>their families have access. Given the extent to which we still live in a de
<BR>facto segregated society in the US, with quite separate spheres of social
<BR>consumption, both the white worker and the worker of color are going to see
<BR>rather significant differences in all of these areas, and identify different
<BR>interests based on them. This is _not_ my friends, a case of mistaken
<BR>identity, of false consciousness of true interests. Insofar as there is a
<BR>faulty conceptual apparatus here, it is that which defines social class
<BR>purely in terms of the point of production, and thus fails to understand why
<BR>both white workers and workers of color might come to such conclusions.
<BR>
<BR>One can still take the classic socialist position here that if workers of all
<BR>races banded together and fought for better conditions for all workers, the
<BR>lot of all workers would be more improved than any one race of workers could
<BR>obtain on their own. But this situation is a classic 'prisoners dilemma,' and
<BR>if they are rational calculators [interests are, of course, a matter of
<BR>rational calculation], each subgroup of workers will have to calculate what
<BR>is the likelihood, given both the existing networks of cooperation and the
<BR>history of competition and group fighting, of successfully building that full
<BR>class alliance, as opposed to the likelihood of achieving lesser but
<BR>nonethless real gains for their own particular subgroup. It is not by pure
<BR>happenstance that the most culturally homogeneous working classes have been
<BR>the easiest to organize as a class. Note that in more multicultural nations,
<BR>there is more likely to be full class institutions in the workplace realm of
<BR>production [such as trade unions] than in the neighborhood/community realm of
<BR>social consumption. Neighborhoods and communities in the US, for example,
<BR>tend to be much more racially and ethnically, than class, cohesive. Working
<BR>people of all races tend to make rather realistic, non-romantic calculations
<BR>when confronted with dilemmas of this sort, since the results of those
<BR>calculations have real impacts on the quality of their lives.
<BR>
<BR>The best work on social class, such as E. P. Thompson's opus, has rejected
<BR>the narrow productivist notions of social class in favor of rich historical
<BR>analyses which examine all of the ways, in relations of production and in
<BR>relations of social consumption, in the economy, in politics and governmental
<BR>action, and in culture and civil society, which are classes are constituted.
<BR>Only when one examines class in its full complexity, can one understand the
<BR>multiple of ways in which class and other relations of social identity
<BR>intersect.
<BR>
<BR>Now the task of those on the left is clearly one of building institutions and
<BR>networks which build cooperation and community among working people of all
<BR>races. But one is best situated to accomplish that task when one has a full
<BR>appreciation for the difficulty of the undertaking, and a decent respect for
<BR>the choices working people find themselves forced to make in their daily
<BR>lives.
<BR>
<BR>Leo Casey
<BR>United Federation of Teachers
<BR>260 Park Avenue South
<BR>New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
<BR>
<BR>Power concedes nothing without a demand.
<BR>It never has, and it never will.
<BR>If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
<BR>Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
<BR>want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
<BR>lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
<BR><P ALIGN=CENTER>-- Frederick Douglass --</P></FONT></HTML>